Commentary

Both this painting and the related work The Babson Meadows at Riverdale, 1863(inv. 11) show the house and property of the Babson family in the Town Parish area of Gloucester. Though both houses are still standing on Washington Street, they abut an area of countryside and salt marsh in the foreground that has become a large traffic rotary (Grant Circle). The paintings were companions (along with a third believed to be lost) and were commissioned by the Babsons, a prominent Gloucester family.

The notes on the drawings indicate that these two works were painted in 1863 for the Babson sisters before their move west to California and served as a remembrance of their home. The scene is a seemingly straightforward account of the Babson house on the right, lit up by the late afternoon sun, and the Ellery house, partially hidden by trees with a barn across the road. The broad town landing comes down to the water where a gundalow full of late summer marsh hay is being poled in to unload.

Babson and Ellery Houses, Gloucester is a masterpiece of serenity and order. The Babson house is a substantial gambrel-roofed New England house; simple, dignified and solid. The eye is led up to the house by the diagonal of the board fence enclosing the garden, all bathed in the pink light of a late summer evening. Moving to the left the gable end of the Ellery house sticks up out of the trees and across the road is the barn in shadow, a sliver of light reflecting off its west side.

Lane has integrated the horizontal composition by stitching it together with the stone walls (each stone obsessively drawn and shaded) that organize the spaces and lead the eye along the roads and into the distance. The walls define rectilinear areas that echo the geometry of the buildings and their enclosures giving order to what could otherwise have been a bland expanse.

The foreground is another example of Lane’s remarkable ability to make a mass of indiscriminate plants and grasses into a delicate botanical tapestry. There is a vaporous pink atmosphere in the sky reflected on the roads and every lit surface in contrast to the diversity of dark greens across the landscape.

This can be called one of Lane’s “perfect” paintings. Every element is locked together in harmony; composition, color and tonal values. The eye is led around a complete and perfect world. There is a great feeling of nostalgia to this work. One can imagine Lane consciously evoking that sentiment on behalf of the departing Babson sisters. Lane himself was nearing the end of his life and the restrained but obvious emotion in this painting has a clear relationship with his elegiac Brace’s Rock series done only a year or so later, just before his death in 1865.

– Sam Holdsworth

Related Work in the Catalog

Supplementary Images

Infrared image shows Lane's carefully rendered buildings, including windows and trees. The grid in t... [more]he center of the painting shows how he transferred the preparatory drawing to the painting. Dark patches are areas of retouching by a later conservator. – Marcia Steele

Published References

The American Neptune, Pictorial Supplement VII: A Selection of Marine Paintings by Fitz Hugh Lane, 1804–1865.Salem, MA: The American Neptune, 1965., plate XXX, no. 117, as View of the Babson and Ellery Houses, Gloucester. ⇒ includes text

Wilmerding, John. Fitz Hugh Lane: The First Major Exhibition.Lincoln, MA: De Cordova Museum; in association with Colby College Art Museum, 1966., no. 56, as View of the Babson and Ellery Houses, Gloucester. ⇒ includes text